BBC - Video Nation - YOUR MEMORIES

Your Memories
2009 marks 25 years since the beginning of the miners' strike, one of the most bitter industrial disputes in British history. It affected thousands of people across the UK. How did it effect you?
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Your Memories
It started when National Coal Board Chairman, Ian McGregor, announced plans to cut coal production, the equivalent of 20 pits or 20,000 jobs. Miners walked out and were soon joined by colleagues around the country. Large stockpiles of coal and the National Union of Mineworkers' decision not to ballot its members meant the strike was not as successful as hoped and it ended exactly a year later. Here are some of your memories of the miners' strike of 1984-85.

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1. At 12:13pm on 07 May 2010, videonation wrote:
Matthew, London 2009-08-20
Poor old Arthur - he got it so wrong. It would make a good story for a Cohen Brothers movie.
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2. At 12:14pm on 07 May 2010, videonation wrote:
Ciaran, Canada 2009-08-20
I was a very young Fleet Street worker at the time and was very happy to give about 5 pounds of my 65 quid a week to the miners. My father's branch of the Readers and Revisers at the Sunday Times raised a small fortune for a pit in Wales. We stood side by side with them as they did with us the year after when that Australian/American so and so moved his newspapers into Wapping. From Scotland to Durham, across Wales and down to Kent, I've never met a braver bunch than the NUM. I remember the night they marched down the Highway into Wapping with their banners raised high and got a stand ovation from the printers along the way. Of course the Met police felt obliged to attack us all after. Sad days indeed.
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3. At 12:14pm on 07 May 2010, videonation wrote:
Jeff Duncan, Salisbury 2009-08-20
At the time of the strikes I was a young 22 year old running a once a week gay disco in London - over the course of the strike we collected around £3,000 and sent it to various mining communities - to some outsiders it seemed odd that gay young men were collecting money for miners and their families but we shared one thing in common - a deep hatred of Margaret Thatcher and her Government and her opposition to the miners and section 28. To this day I could never vote Conservative despite owning my own company now. As for Heseltine - his punishment will come sooner or later!
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4. At 12:15pm on 07 May 2010, videonation wrote:
Ewen Green, Oxford 2009-08-20
I was a graduate student in Cambridge during the strike. I supported the miners. When I became a don in Oxford I was told that when Thatcher visited All Souls College during the strike a Labour-voting don showed her around. When they came to a portrait of the 1930s Marxer it was first fellow of the College, GDH. Cole, he told Thatcher it was the famous left winger GDH Dole, hoping she would correct him by saying "Cole [coal] not Dole" as he wanted her to hear her say that just once - she didn't!
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